Xbolx tat blog, Jan 2016 'FLEET UPDATE'

[rustempire]

I can't believe you managed to bag an FSO, right under my blimmin nose as well.

Great purchase, I've had such a love for them ever since I was on a work trip to Warsaw sat watching 4 likely lads from the big estate on the left push a white one across 6 lanes of traffic to the big grey estate on the right.

I just sat right there thinking that's my kind of car over there, shows you who your true friends are, lol.

Rob

[hairnet]

polonez - built better than the maser???

top purchasing mr b

await the pics of you chasing a 125p down the road waving used fivers ;D

[jonw]

Oh my.... a Polonez!

My Grandad had one of these and it was awful! It was loud, rough, unreliable and it leaked. The only thing it seemed good at was rusting!

As with Hairnet..... which is worse, the Maz or the nez???

[stackahumanoid]

Sept 16, 2012 21:29:40 GMT vitesseefi said:

"Gajah Tunggals" is Mongolian for "ditchfinders"

Nick

Lolz

[iant]

Reading and enjoying this thread made me late to collect the boy from beavers tonight!
TOP READ as always!
Thank you Bollo!

[xbo11ox]

WORD 2 YA MUTHA

Been doing a bit on the Maser again recently, believe it or not. Lst time I had painted the sills with stonechip stuff... Now I have painted em with some generic dark grey satin finish, and boshed the doors back on. Looks llike this now:



Infuriatingly I found a rot hole while I was fitting the drivers door, its on but I will have to take it off again to fettle that.



Anyway it looks a bit more like a car again and the floor looks great!


Well happy about that.

Now it was time to dig into the last big bit of obvious rot on the car, the drivers side front wing.


There was a nice big patch riveted in and wobbed over in the classical style, soon ripped that out!



Before ripping inot it too much, I had a look to see what use the spare front end was going to be. Cleaned up the wing:


Rubbish, that will need looking at


thats been patched up once before:


Sliced off the front wing, will have to re-make that front edge like on the other side


Its all full of wob in the top as well!

Next I 'liberated' the headlight panel with careful use of the spot weld drilla:



Bit more choppage:


Hey thats gonna be 'spot bo11ock on' (as the professionals say)

Decided to try and use a big chunk of the inner wing from the spare metalwork, but thought i'd better try to clean it up first, as you can see it had a sort of a 'lesion' where someone had repaired a 1.5" hole with mig weld:


chopped that out and welded a little piece in its place:


the front end of the inner wing had rotted away quite badly, so i 'reinstated' the metal as best I could:



I was about ready to slice the relevant bit of inner wing bit out of the spare front end, so i trimmed up mine so i'd know exactly where to cut:




I clamped the sliced off rotten bit on top of my 'new' inner wing and marked around it, you can see how much of the old one had rotted away, pretty much the whole front 4-5 inches or so:


TREASURE!!!111!



As it turned out i'm getting reasonable VFM from this front end, used quite a lot of it in the end.


Started to set it in position:


Looked like that from underneath. Its double skinned aloing that bottom edge so i was gonna weld it from both sides so as to get both skins.


Before welding it properly, i checked it for fit with the headlight panel and a few clamps:


All seemed good so lashed on the weld-thru paint:




Welded it on.


To be honest thats about where i'm up to, next job is to fix up that outer wing and get it fitted on, then i'm not sure after that.... I want to put as much stuff back on as possible, before starting to think about taking the engine out!!!! We'll see.

Thanks for looking, L8RZ T8RZ

[86mike]

Just brilliant:-)

[hairnet]

patience of a saint

[Deleted]

when you finish this you will have to go to welder's anonymous!!

[Mark]

I love this thread. Top work MrB.

[Stu]

A Polonez! ;D

[speedy88]

Honorable work!

[xbo11ox]

ALright gang, time for an update:

1) the ROVER.Recently it was time for this car to have its 3rd MOT in my ownership.



I am well chuffed to report that, despite having covered 24,000 miles in a year, it went straight through with only an advisory for 'oil leak' (what a surprise). Great car! I rewarded it by fitting a new cambelt + tensioner:



I'd had an inkling that at least some of my leaking oil ws coming from a camshaft seal, sure enough:


So, new belt, tensioner and cam seals then!


Anyway that went without incident and this car is going great guns, i've done 62,000 miles in it in total, 55,000 on the engine I fitted which already had about 125k on! 180k on a Rover engine!!! It runs and sounds absolutely great as well, can't fault it (apart from the oil leaks).

Next:


This old jetta briefly joined the gang, it belonged to a Neighbour of forum member lankyTim's family, and he got wind that it was going for scrap! I had previously admired it so he gave me a shout and we managed to save it from the crusher with 24hrs to spare. It was a nice old thing alright, 85k on and unmessed with, only real problem was some manky paintwork on the LH side. I boshed it in for an MOT which it failed on a few bits:

A set of discs and pads, new drop links and a new wheel cylinder saw it fit for another 12 months on the road so that was reasonably painless. Hitit up with the polishing mop:



And sold it on this forum within 48 hours! Brilliant!!! I didn't make a lot of money on it but covered all my costs plus a few beers and the Jetta lives on so thats a result innit.


As for the MASER, i've even done a bit on that too.
had to get the LH front wing sorted. I chpped it off the front end and had an inspection:



Not great, obviously been 'repaired' a bit in the past. I needed to replace a bit of it that had the swage line pressed in, so had a crack at making a replacement bit:


Made the swage line OK, but the patch was too small!



Rather than bin it I just added a bit on to make it fit.
chop a hole out:


clamp in the new bit:


Next I made a 'hockey stick' shaped but for the front edge of the wing, didnt take any photos but this is what I ended up with:



tried it on:


My new inner wing would need a bit of shaping, but not an impossible amount:


repaired a little hole in the inner:


trimmed up and joggled the old outer wing:


Welded on the bumper bracket and lashed on the 'WELD-THRU':


Fitting and adjusting the wing:



Tested it for fit with the headlamp 'glasses'

Maybe not perfect, but tt'll do for me! Its as good/bad as the other side.

plenty of red oxide everywhere:


final welding:


its on!


finally, stripped all the paint off ready for some wob, theere was about 6 layers of paint on the wing!


Thats both floors and both wing tips fully welded up... that must be 90% of the welding done now. Might even get a bit more in this weekend if i'm lucky..! Bloody hope so, i am getting sick of welding this thing up

[Mike D]

The Maser is starting to look fantastic, hope you get the welding finished off so you can rest your mig hand and give the oily bits a good seeing to!

[markgenesis]

Fantastic work on the Masser, Rover, and VW

The Masser is particularly inspiring, 100% class work and effort.

Everytime i look a this thread it gives me a MOJO boost to go out to the garage and do a bit.

[Lopez]

Bloody ace work on that wing, whenever I need a mojo boost this is always the first thread I open, TOP NOTCH, WOULD READ AGAIN

[iant]

Great skills! Keep up the good work. This thing will be back on the road before you know it!

[stealthstylz]

Good work bolleaux, that wing looks fantastic.

[155ringman]

Great work on them all sir! Should've had that Jetta off you now that I've seen the pics of it. My lad is going to need something cheap and worthy and that would have fitted the bill rightly. I'll kick myself quietly..

Maser is coming on great. Looking closer to paint by the week. Quality!!

[whos dave]

Aw man, i do love it on a monday lunch time when i discover an xbollox update!

This blog is the best thing on the internet - including nuddy pics!

Truely inspirational stuff!